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A Scientometric Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable Planet with a Mass Similar to Earth

BACKGROUND: The search for a habitable extrasolar planet has long interested scientists, but only recently have the tools become available to search for such planets. In the past decades, the number of known extrasolar planets has ballooned into the hundreds, and with it, the expectation that the di...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Arbesman, Samuel, Laughlin, Gregory
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2949384/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20957226
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013061
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author Arbesman, Samuel
Laughlin, Gregory
author_facet Arbesman, Samuel
Laughlin, Gregory
author_sort Arbesman, Samuel
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The search for a habitable extrasolar planet has long interested scientists, but only recently have the tools become available to search for such planets. In the past decades, the number of known extrasolar planets has ballooned into the hundreds, and with it, the expectation that the discovery of the first Earth-like extrasolar planet is not far off. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we develop a novel metric of habitability for discovered planets and use this to arrive at a prediction for when the first habitable planet will be discovered. Using a bootstrap analysis of currently discovered exoplanets, we predict the discovery of the first Earth-like planet to be announced in the first half of 2011, with the likeliest date being early May 2011. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our predictions, using only the properties of previously discovered exoplanets, accord well with external estimates for the discovery of the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet and highlight the the usefulness of predictive scientometric techniques to understand the pace of scientific discovery in many fields.
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spelling pubmed-29493842010-10-18 A Scientometric Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable Planet with a Mass Similar to Earth Arbesman, Samuel Laughlin, Gregory PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: The search for a habitable extrasolar planet has long interested scientists, but only recently have the tools become available to search for such planets. In the past decades, the number of known extrasolar planets has ballooned into the hundreds, and with it, the expectation that the discovery of the first Earth-like extrasolar planet is not far off. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we develop a novel metric of habitability for discovered planets and use this to arrive at a prediction for when the first habitable planet will be discovered. Using a bootstrap analysis of currently discovered exoplanets, we predict the discovery of the first Earth-like planet to be announced in the first half of 2011, with the likeliest date being early May 2011. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our predictions, using only the properties of previously discovered exoplanets, accord well with external estimates for the discovery of the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet and highlight the the usefulness of predictive scientometric techniques to understand the pace of scientific discovery in many fields. Public Library of Science 2010-10-04 /pmc/articles/PMC2949384/ /pubmed/20957226 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013061 Text en Arbesman, Laughlin. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Arbesman, Samuel
Laughlin, Gregory
A Scientometric Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable Planet with a Mass Similar to Earth
title A Scientometric Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable Planet with a Mass Similar to Earth
title_full A Scientometric Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable Planet with a Mass Similar to Earth
title_fullStr A Scientometric Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable Planet with a Mass Similar to Earth
title_full_unstemmed A Scientometric Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable Planet with a Mass Similar to Earth
title_short A Scientometric Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable Planet with a Mass Similar to Earth
title_sort scientometric prediction of the discovery of the first potentially habitable planet with a mass similar to earth
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2949384/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20957226
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013061
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